Posted
by
timothy
on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:38PM
from the sure-they-do dept.

parad0x writes: "This article in Nature describes researchers at the University of Washington in Seatlle developing molecular robots which can produce maps of microscopic structures and devices with extremely high revolution, at times exceeding the abilities of conventional microscopes."

HOLY SH*T. is any one not astounded by this article? i noticed that no one has commented about these nanobots. either the article is a joke or it must be a really bad@ss technology. i'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. what does everyone else think?

Well they're not really nanobots... at least not in the sense that they're manmade, capable of motion, or even controllable.

What these guys have called nanobots are nothing but tiny fragments of microtubules. They "move" about the cell by being pushed around by kinesin proteins coating the membrane surface...kind of like surfing across a big mosh pit.

Our cells contain kinesin molecules that blindly "walk" down the length of microtubules, moving cargo from one part of a cell to another. If anything, these are the real nanobots, since they actually do the moving.

I've found that this site: http://www.nanotechplanet.com/ [nanotechplanet.com] is a great reference to the business side of the nanotechnology field. If you're interested in learning more about the current research going on, or about what company to invest in, I think it's a pretty good starting point.

To create self-propelled nanoscale robots, Vogel's team reversed nature's arrangement. By fixing kinesin molecules all over a surface, wormlike microtubules propel themselves randomly all over the surface. By attaching a fluorescent dye to the microtubules, the researchers can follow where they go - and where they don't.

It would have been nice to see the article compare this to the latest technologies in STM (scanning tunneling microscopy).

It seems like STM's are not what is referred to as conventional microscopes, which makes sense, but it might be noteworthy that resolutions like those mentioned in the article are not particularly hard to achieve.

It would have been nice to see the article compare this to the latest technologies in STM (scanning tunneling microscopy).

It doesn't compare. These images are film/CCD captured. What these guys have done is to put flourescent molecules on proteins that "walk" down microtubules. So instead of just seeing the whole microtubule skeleton at once (which you could do with a specific stain), you see a version that "develops" as the proteins traverse it. Yea.